No More Learning

DEAR COUSIN,

I would have returned you my thanks for your kind favour of the 13th
of December sooner, had it not been that I waited to give you an
account of that melancholy event, which, for some time past, we have
from day to day expected.

On the 13th current I lost the best of fathers. Though, to be sure, we
have had long warning of the impending stroke; still the feelings of
nature claim their part, and I cannot recollect the tender endearments
and parental lessons of the best of friends and ablest of instructors,
without feeling what perhaps the calmer dictates of reason would
partly condemn.

I hope my father's friends in your country will not let their
connexion in this place die with him. For my part I shall ever with
pleasure--with pride, acknowledge my connexion with those who were
allied by the ties of blood and friendship to a man whose memory I
shall ever honour and revere.

I expect, therefore, my dear Sir, you will not neglect any opportunity
of letting me hear from you, which will very much oblige,

My dear Cousin, yours sincerely,

R. B.

* * * * *




X.


TO JAMES BURNESS,

MONTROSE.

[Mrs. Buchan, the forerunner in extravagance and absurdity of Joanna
Southcote, after attempting to fix her tent among the hills of the
west and the vales of the Nith, finally set up her staff at
Auchengibbert-Hill, in Galloway, where she lectured her followers, and
held out hopes of their reaching the stars, even in this life. She
died early: one or two of her people, as she called them, survived
till within these half-dozen years. ]

_Mossgiel, August_, 1784.

We have been surprised with one of the most extraordinary phenomena in
the moral world which, I dare say, had happened in the course of this
half century. We have had a party of Presbytery relief, as they call
themselves, for some time in this country.
A pretty thriving society
of them has been in the burgh of Irvine for some years past, till
about two years ago, a Mrs. Buchan from Glasgow came among them, and
began to spread some fanatical notions of religion among them, and, in
a short time, made many converts; and, among others, their preacher,
Mr. Whyte, who, upon that account, has been suspended and formally
deposed by his brethren. He continued, however, to preach in private
to his party, and was supported, both he and their spiritual mother,
as they affect to call old Buchan, by the contributions of the rest,
several of whom were in good circumstances; till, in spring last, the
populace rose and mobbed Mrs. Buchan, and put her out of the town; on
which all her followers voluntarily quitted the place likewise, and
with such precipitation, that many of them never shut their doors
behind them; one left a washing on the green, another a cow bellowing
at the crib without food, or anybody to mind her, and after several
stages, they are fixed at present in the neighbourhood of Dumfries.
Their tenets are a strange jumble of enthusiastic jargon; among
others, she pretends to give them the Holy Ghost by breathing on them,
which she does with postures and practices that are scandalously
indecent; they have likewise disposed of all their effects, and hold a
community of goods, and live nearly an idle life, carrying on a great
farce of pretended devotion in barns and woods, where they lodge and
lie all together, and hold likewise a community of women, as it is
another of their tenets that they can commit no mortal sin. I am
personally acquainted with most of them, and I can assure you the
above mentioned are facts.

This, my dear Sir, is one of the many instances of the folly of
leaving the guidance of sound reason and common sense in matters of
religion.

Whenever we neglect or despise these sacred monitors, the whimsical
notions of a perturbated brain are taken for the immediate influences
of the Deity, and the wildest fanaticism, and the most inconstant
absurdities, will meet with abettors and converts. Nay, I have often
thought, that the more out-of-the-way and ridiculous the fancies are,
if once they are sanctified under the sacred name of religion, the
unhappy mistaken votaries are the more firmly glued to them.

R. B.

* * * * *




XI.


TO MISS ----.

[This has generally been printed among the early letters of Burns.
Cromek thinks that the person addressed was the "Peggy" of the
Common-place Book.